Northgate Managed Services

The wide area service originally part of Leicester’s Building Schools for the Future programme has provided a flexible, robust and scalable ICT service for a number of secondary schools in Leicester city.

Northgate has worked closely with each individual school to deliver a solution tailored to their individual requirements, ranging from an ICT managed service to consultancy and project based solutions to continue to deliver cost savings and operational efficiency improvements within the schools. 

Across Leicester 23 schools will benefit from various levels of an ICT service, tailored to their specific requirements.

Hartsbrook E-ACT Free School, located in Tottenham, London opened its doors on the 10^th of September.  The Free School is temporarily located on the ground floor of The College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London’s Tottenham Green Campus while their new school is being built.

Northgate Managed Services, E-ACT and Microsoft have worked closely together to provide a cloud based service to Hartsbrook E-ACT Free School, with all IT services hosted in the public cloud and no physical servers located on school premises. Hartsbrook Free School are the first primary school in the UK to implement a Microsoft cloud based solution including Windows 8

The school plan to continually extend curriculum delivery across various devices and enhance students IT skills through the adoption of Microsoft Surface devices and Windows phones, and are planning on participating in a pilot in the near future.

Northgate Managed Services is working as an active, long term ICT partner to E-ACT, providing ICT services to its 27 academies and 2 Free Schools.

The ICT Service includes:

• Provision of a Wide Area Network
• Common Telephony System
• Microsoft Office 365 Cloud Solution
• SharePoint Online portal
• ICT infrastructure services
• Consultancy and change management
• Various levels of ICT support

Northgate and E-ACT will continue to work together developing a long term partnership to share knowledge, provide an innovative and reliable IT service and aid E-ACT in growing their academy and Free School base.

Challenge

Located within a deprived community, the old school suffered from under achievement and lack of investment.  With a new school the key focus was on technology becoming one of the enablers for transforming learning.  The Academy's goal was to provide anytime, anywhere learning which would foster ingenuity, creativity and innovation. 

Solution

Piloting devices and testing technologies has been key to the success.  Northgate designed and implemented the first Apple school in the UK with every student and staff member having access to an iPod Touch which is integrated into lessons.  There are a number of cloud based services including cloud printing options and teachers can save information on a drop box rather than school servers.  Northgate are delivering an infrastructure which continues to support current and future technology within the school.

Result

Learning has been transformed with dramatic improvements in GCSE results within just 2 years.  The school believe technology is at the heart of this success.

Challenge

A challenging timeline was set with contract sign in July to ensuring the new build school was ready to open its doors in September.

Solution

Northgate deliver a school-managed service, providing support for school devices and the server infrastructure.  Provision of Northgate's Service Desk and on-site support one day per week.  A Managed Print service has been implemented and a full managed service is being introduced gradually over a 6 month period.

Result

Successful implementation of the initial services and scalable infrastructure have now led to development of these services as the school grows.  Future plans are in place for a full managed service.

Challenge

With the design and build of a new school building, Litherland High School sought an ICT partner to design, install and manage a scalable IT infrastructure and utilise technologies which would drive down costs and reduce environmental impact.

Solution

Northgate are delivering a full managed service with a dedicated team responsible for IT.  90% of student school owned devices are thin client and there is a managed print service with fingerprint recognition for printing anywhere within the school.

Results

The services being delivered by Northgate are driving down the operational costs of IT for the school with an on-going focus to identify areas of efficiency, operational and environmental improvements.  The reduced cost, thin client devices enabled an increase in student devices to almost 1:1 whilst reducing power consumption and providing a more responsive service. The Managed Print Service has reduced the volume of print in the school resulting in reduced costs and impact on the environment.

Challenge

One of Hugh Christie's goals was to provide anytime anywhere access to learning resources and key applications.  The school also sought to improve efficiencies by hosting key systems in the cloud.

Solution

The adoption of MY-SCHOOL allowed students and teachers to access the school's on-line systems and applications 24x7 from any device which can access the internet.  The cloud based application offers predictable, on demand pay per user licensing costs which schools can deploy without further investment in the IT infrastructure.

Result

Improved access to key applications at home through removing the need to buy Office licenses.  By moving to a platform which allows students to work on any device with a web browser future proofs the ICT provision and investment. Students can bring their own devices, creating a 1:1 access to technology as well as benefiting from reduced licensing, procurement and hardware costs.

Challenge

To deliver a sustainable ICT service which would meet changing future needs

Solution

Northgate is delivering a full managed service as well as a number of other ICT services to drive efficiencies such as managed print and thin client devices.  Due to early engagement, Northgate were able to trial hardware and software applications, visit other schools and experience how technologies are being adopted.

Result

ICT has helped to further motivate and engage the students, providing remote access to school systems has promoted independant and life-long learning.  Efficiency and cost savings have also been made with the introduction of technology such as managed print and thin client.  The managed service provision has allowed the school's IT Manager to focus on developing the IT strategy rather than day to day issues.

Key Points

Challenge

Abraham Guest High were building a new school and needed an ICT partner to design and implement a technology environment that supports the learning needs of their students focussing on student engagement, collaboration and independent learning.

Solution

Northgate designed and installed the new ICT infrastructure which included a wireless solution and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. A biometric locker system for laptops provide students with access to a laptop whenever needed.  The onsite IT team is supported by Northgate with an IT Service Desk responsible for problem and incident management and a remote management and monitoring service.

Result

Students have flexible access to their work and school applications whether at home or at school.  The new technology is supporting the school's vision of enhancing teaching and learning with students more engaged in lessons.